The bombing came just two days after a rebel attack on the state TV building in the northwestern city of Aleppo and a month after an explosion caused severe damage to the headquarters of the pro-government TV station Al-Ekhbarya.

“We condemn these targeted attacks on state TV buildings in Damascus and Aleppo as well as murders and abductions of journalists,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Neither news media, professional journalists nor citizen journalists should be targeted by any of the parties to this conflict.

“We urge the main components of the opposition, both civilian and military, to condemn these atrocities. We also strongly condemn the publication and broadcasting of messages inciting hatred and violence against the civilian population. The media must not relay propaganda of any kind.”

According to the London-based Syrian Human Rights Monitoring Centre, Mohammad Sayeed, the state TV presenter who was kidnapped from his Damascus home on 19 July, has been killed.

His abduction and murder were clamed by Al-Nosra, an Islamist group, which described Sayeed as a pro-government militia member (shabbih) and said he was interrogated and then executed. The Al-Nosra communiqué, accompanied by a photo of Sayeed with his abductors, was posted on a website that displays an Al-Qaeda flag.

State TV chief Maan Saleh has not confirmed Sayeed’s death. “We have no hard evidence that he is dead,” Saleh told Agence France-Presse. The rebel Free Syrian Army has meanwhile denied having anything to do with his abduction and murder.

Talal Janbakeli, a state TV cameraman, was meanwhile kidnapped by the Harun Al-Rasheed militia yesterday in Damascus. In a video released by his abductors, he could be seen in an abnormal state repeating phrases dictated by a person out of camera view about the Syrian army’s atrocities.

State TV reporter Kareem Shibani was shot and wounded in the back while covering clashes in the Damascus neighbourhood of Tadamun on 4 August.

The Syria-News website has reported that the journalist Ahmed Thabet Mohssen has been missing since 1 August. Family sources said they thought he was arrested with a friend at an army checkpoint at Qorra al-Assad, near Damascus.

Finally, France 24 reporter Chady Chlela had to leave Syria on 29 July, just 48 hours after arrived because messages threatening him were circulating on social media. They described him as a Shiite agent in the Syrian government’s pay and said he should be prevented from working with the rebels. On this return to Paris, he filed a complaint about “death threats” with the prosecutor’s office.

Several netizens and bloggers were also detained, including Khalifa Al-Nuaimi (https://kalnuaimi.wordpress.com), Rashid Omran Al Shamsi (http://rashedalshamsi.blogspot.fr), Omran Al Radhwan (http://omran83.tumblr.com), Abdullah Al-Haajri (https://alhajria.wordpress.com/), the lawyer Salim Hamdoon Alshehhi (http://salemalshehhi.wordpress.com), and Juma Darwish Al-Felasi (http://alfelasi.com). Two human rights lawyers, Mohamed Al-Mansoori (http://www.emasc.co), the former president of the United Arab Emirates Jurists Association, and Mohamed Abdulah Al-Roken, a defence lawyer in the in so-called “UAE 5” case, were also on the list of detainees.

The group faces charges of opposing the constitution and the basic principles of the UAE ruling system, in addition to having links and affiliations to organisations with foreign agendas. The Abu Dhabi public prosecutor, Salem Saeed Kubaish, said they “are being held in preventive custody for investigation”.

The arrests were made a day after the authorities announced the existence of a group alleged to be plotting against national security.

Reporters Without Borders calls for their immediate release. “The authorities must put an end to successive arrests of campaigners and human rights campaigners, which flagrantly violates basic freedoms,” the organization said. “The authorities wilfully regard any sign of criticism of the system as a danger to national security in order to stifle dissent. These attempts at intimidation are doomed to fail.”

The group of prisoners of conscience in the country, known as the “UAE 27” then the “UAE 30”, continues to grow. Today 31 activists and campaigners are in detention, all of whom have been arrested since March. Most are signatories of a 2011 petition calling for the Federal National Council, the UAE’s advisory council, to be given legislative powers and control over the executive.

It is not the first time the government has acted to conceal criticism. In April last year, a group of netizens known as the “UAE 5” were arrested for publicly insulting UAE leaders and calling for anti-government demonstrations.

Ahmed Mansoor, a blogger and administrator of the democracy discussion forum Al-Hewar, Farhad Salem Al-Shehh, also a blogger and the forum’s co-administrator, Nasser bin Ghaith, a writer and professor at Abu Dhabi’s Université Paris-Sorbonne, and the activists Hassan Ali Al-Khamis and Ahmed Abdul Khaleq, who have expressed themselves freely on the Internet and also signed a petition urging the authorities to carry out reforms. After a trial, they were sentenced on 27 November last year to between two and three years’ imprisonment for insulting UAE leaders and calling for anti-government demonstrations. They were pardoned and released the following day.

The activist Ahmed Abdul Khaleq was deported to Thailand on 16 July after being falsely summoned to a government office for administrative reasons on May 22. Stripped of their citizenship, he and his family were granted Comoros passports and economic citizenship, without political rights. In theory, this should allow them to live in the UAE and eventually to become naturalized citizens on the basis of a 2009 agreement between the two countries.

The United Arab Emirates is among countries under surveillance on the list of Internet Enemies published by Reporters Without Borders in March. For months the government has been stepping up pressure on netizens, cracking down on dissident voices and calls for democratic reform.

Faced by the probability of imminent arrest, physical violence, harassment or even murder, these men and women have had to abandon family, friends and colleagues in a quest for greater security.

Because of a lack of funds or because they departed in haste, they often end up being stranded in neighbouring countries that are accessible to refugees but also to the agents of the governments they are fleeing. As a result, their safety is far from being assured in these countries of initial refuge.

Reporters Without Borders wrote to UN High Commissioner for Refugees Guterres on 30 May alerting him to the situation of refugee journalists in countries such as Turkey, Uganda and Kenya. Today, they released the letter and the recommendations it contains.

Reporters Without Borders call on UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, to establish an alert mechanism with a designated referral officer within each of its local offices so that cases involving refugee journalists and human rights activists can be identified and handled more quickly because they are particularly exposed to danger.

They also urge the High Commissioner to ensure that refugee journalists and human rights activists get better access to appropriate individual protection, to the emergency resettlement process and to the UN’s mechanism for temporary evacuation to a safe third country.

Finally, Reporters Without Borders is convinced that UN member states have a duty to help protect journalists who are forced to flee into exile because of their work. It therefore urges Guterres to publicly acknowledge that the UN’s traditional protection procedure is not appropriate for refugee journalists and human rights activists, who continue to be in danger in countries of initial refuge, and to urge member states to take the necessary action.

The latest version of the Guide for journalists who flee into exile, which Reporters Without Borders first published in 2009, contains some 30 pages of advice for refugee journalists about UNHCR protection procedures and seeking asylum in Europe and North America. Journalists who have had to flee their country will find information, tips and contacts that will help to guide and assist them during the long and difficult process of starting a new life.

Security forces have launched a major campaign of raids on media institutions, both in Baghdad and throughout Iraq the NGO stated.

According to statistics of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory & the Metro Center to Defend Journalists (KRG), the number of attacks on journalists all over Iraq amount to more than 160 cases, including about 60 violations In the Kurdistan region alone.

The JFO also documented, in images and video clips, assaults against several journalists by security forces in the region.

The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory expresses its concern of recent attacks against the press, strongly condemns them and calls on the Iraqi government to take action to reduce these attacks and violations. It also calls on authorities to investigate all attacks against journalists and media institutions and bring those responsible to justice.

Violence against journalists and restrictions on media have worsened in the past year in Iraq, in a country already thought to have among the worst press freedoms in the world.

Iraq ranked 152nd out of the 179 countries in media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) 2010-1011 World Press Freedom Index.